The Death of Mrs Westaway

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A highly principled young woman in her late teens is left alone in the world when her mother is killed in a hit-and-run. Having been left destitute, she drops out of school and takes over her mother’s fortune-telling booth on a Brighton pier to make ends meet. Even so, she falls prey to a loan shark, who is now demanding repayment. And that’s where this book starts, with a letter from a solicitor informing her that her grandmother has died leaving a substantial estate. The trouble is, even though it’s addressed to her, they’ve clearly mistaken her for somebody else.

I took to this almost immediately. Ruth Ware’s prose is easy on the eye, and the book is very different from what I usually read, so it acted as a great palate cleanser. This is no cozy mystery; it’s a thriller—though truth be told it’s really a Gothic. With the ancient, rundown house set in some desolate part of Cornwall, the sprawling grounds infested with magpies, and the unwelcoming, equally-as-ancient housekeeper, it certainly has all the trappings.

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